RS

EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Surveillance Nation

I’ve written previously on HUMAN EVENTS about the state of Big Brother Britain, and things are only getting worse.News broke this week that the police have a series of databases recording the personal details of thousands of people who attend protests or rallies, which are searchable by a number of officers and come complete with color photographs assembled and printed onto “spotter cards” which are then distributed to enable agencies to monitor attendees at events. Cost of this part of the surveillance state alone? Over nine million pounds.Moreover, we have the most CCTV of any country, we have the world’s biggest DNA database, and we have a “Regulation of Investigatory Powers” Act which empowers councils to carry out covert surveillance of people — legislation which was introduced to be used sparingly in serious cases such as organized crime and terrorism and is instead now regularly used for investigating noise pollution, school catchment areas, fly-tipping (i.e. dropping garbage), dog fouling. Certainly, these things ought ideally to be policed, but do we need to empower hundreds of agencies with secret powers to do so? To give you a sense of the scale of this surveillance, consider over 500,000 such covert investigations took place last year alone.